Tag: Obamacare

Senate republicans introduced another health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and if you are keeping count that is plan number 3, including the House plan.

So what have we learned from these republican plans to replace Obamacare?

Well, republicans seem to not give a damn about poor people being able to afford healthcare, and they don’t really care about keep campaign promises.

Throughout Trump’s campaign he said he would not make cuts to Medicaid

But President Trump celebrated the House health care plan; The American Health Care Act (AHCA) in the White House Rose Garden when the House passed its plan. A plan that included approximately $834 billion in cuts to Medicaid

What happened President Trump?

What happened to republicans promising to lower deductibles and premiums?

In the beginning of the year on Face the Nation, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell talked about the status quo being “unacceptable” with premiums and deductibles being too high. The problem is that healthcare plans from both the House and Senate fail to address what they have promised. And they lead to more Americans being without health insurance. Their plans offer cheap programs that will allow insurers to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions while deductibles remain high.

How does these plans offered by Republicans Make America Great Again???

What’s so great about making it more difficult for the less fortunate to receive affordable health care?

As always….

If there is something to be said, “It’s On Broadway” to step up and say it!!

When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their report giving an updated estimate on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) earlier this week; the report revised its initial figures and stated that due to Obamacare the work hours would be reduced to the equivalent of 2 million jobs in 2024.

No, it did not say 2 millions jobs would be lost!

Republicans like fly on shit have jumped all over the “equivalent of 2 million jobs” part, it’s too bad that they completely misread what the CBO was trying to say.

Obamacare offers subsidies to help individuals to pay for health insurance, that along with lower premiums being offered through the exchanges have made insurance more affordable. With insurance being more affordable, people now have options. If you did not have a full-time job that offered you health insurance, paying for insurance on your own was beyond costly.

Now people have options, and this is a good thing. Currently there a large number of baby boomers who are working late into their 60s for healthcare; we have all seen grandma working at McDonald’s and it’s a sad sight.

Some will argue that this will produce a disincentive for people to work as they would not want to lose the subsidies provided by Obamacare. This is a silly assumption, why would anyone turn down the opportunity to work full-time just to keep some subsidies. Hmmmm, more money or stay part-time…… Now it is possible you will have some lazy folks who will try to game the system to get the most out of it without doing much. But here is different way to look at it, on Wednesday Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf spoke to a House Budget Committee to explain the CBO report.

“There is a critical difference between people who want to work and can’t find a job…and people who choose not to work because because [they’ve] decided to retire, or spend more time with their family, or spend time on a hobby,” Elmendorf said. “They don’t feel bad about it, they feel good about it. We don’t feel bad about it, we say, ‘Congratulations.’”

Let’s say a single mother works and pays for childcare, wouldn’t it be nice if she could save money on childcare if say a family member (mother, or aunt) could afford to retire to help that single mother take care of her child?

There are problems with Obamacare that need to be fixed, but this is not what Republicans are trying to make it. Also, it’s funny how Republicans conveniently leave out the other thing the CBO report stated that there is, “no compelling evidence” to suggest that Obamacare will increase part-time employment over full-time employment.

As always….

If there is something to be said, “It’s On Broadway” to step up and say it!!

Along with some “glitches” (too much traffic hitting site) in accessing https://www.healthcare.gov/, which in all honesty is something we should have expected. There is NEVER a perfect roll-out and while this is definitely not perfect it is far from a massive failure of the program. As someone who works in IT I can understand the issues the gov’t is having in traffic hitting the site and causing it to crash. No matter how much you test or stress test a site you just never now until you go live.

Luckily enough these are issues that can be resolved fairly quickly, so folks may continue to see this….

for a couple of hours but time will only tell the overall impact of Obamacare.

Now if Republicans would have avoided the gov’t shutdown, the glitches of Obamacare roll-out would have been the #1 story in the news cycle. SMH

As always….

If there is something to be said, “It’s On Broadway” to step up and say it!!

House Leadership has stated they will not offer up any more Continuing Resolutions (CR) to avoid a government shutdown tonight (9/30/2013). The United States government will basically be run by a skeleton crew of folks who have been deemed “essential personnel”.

While I did not want to see a government shutdown, I have to say that I am pleased that Democrats have stood up and decided to tell RepublicansNO! Sometimes you have to take a step back to take 2 steps forward. Up to now it has not worked for Democrats to compromise on CRs and raising the debt limit and we have received in return is running gov’t 1 crisis after another.

That is no way for the gov’t of the United States to be run

It’s my belief that Republicans have always wanted a government shutdown since the day after PresidentObama won re-election. For 4 years Republicans tweeted daily a countdown of the last time the Senate passed a budget. So when the Senate finally passed a budget (I will admit Dems should have been passed a budget a long time ago) you would think House Republicans would be thrilled and anxious to start debate on that budget. Instead Republicans refused to go to conference to hammer out a budget deal and decided to continue to run gov’t by CRs. Because with CRs Republicans could negotiate (and I use that term loosely) draconian cuts to spending and now they are looking to defund or delay Obamacare. Passing a budget would only take away the negotiating power of Republicans and that is something they do not want to lose, without that power they would not be able to achieve their #1 goal and that’s obstructing President Obama and government from moving forward.

Since the day the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare aka ACA was signed into law (March 23, 2010) Republicans have talked about repealing the law….

REPEAL AND REPLACE!!!!

The only problem is there is no plan to replace, well Republicans will tell you they have a “plan”. But there plan is more of incremental changes that will not insure nearly as many Americans and will not put much of a dent in the rising cost of healthcare.

So how is it Republicans have been talking about repeal and replace since 2010 and now that it is 2012, there is NO real plan to replace?

What kind of leadership is Speaker Boehner providing for the GOP if he can’t come up with some kind of plan to replace Obamacare. The GOP had 2 YEARS to come up with something, instead they are empty-handed. And once again Republicans in the House of Representatives decided they must have another vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act…. For the 33rd time, and for the 33rd time there was no plan to replace.

Here is a funny but truthful speech by Representative Al Green from Texas:

Kudos to Al for speaking the truth and showing the foolishness of the GOP, by the way here is great descriptive pic that the Democratic Party Facebook page posted:

As always….

If there is something to be said, “It’s On Broadway” to step up and say it!!

Thursday June 28th will go down as a pivotal moment in President Obama‘s presidency, whether this will be a good or bad moment is yet to be determined as now President Obama will turn his complete focus to winning his re-election bid. In that re-election bid President Obama will have another chance to sell the Affordable Care Act as Mitt Romney and the Republican congress will campaign against it.

Ezra Klein laid out 11 key facts about the Affordable Care Act in his WonkBlog:

By 2022, the Congressional Budget Office estimates (pdf) the Affordable Care Act will have extended coverage to 33 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured.

Families making less than 133 percent of the poverty line — that’s about $29,000 for a family of four — will be covered through Medicaid. Between 133 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line — $88,000 for a family of four – families will get tax credits on a sliding scale to help pay for private insurance.

For families making less than 400 percent of the poverty line, premiums are capped. So, between 150% and 200% of the poverty line, for instance, families won’t have to pay more than 6.3 percent of their income in premiums. Between 300 percent and 400 percent, they won’t have to pay more than 9.5 percent. This calculator from the Kaiser Family Foundation will let you see the subsidies and the caps for different families at different income levels.

When the individual mandate is fully phased-in, those who can afford coverage — which is defined as insurance costing less than 8 percent of their annual income — but choose to forgo it will have to pay either $695 or 2.5 percent of the annual income, whichever is greater.

Small businesses that have fewer than 10 employees, average wages beneath $25,000, and that provide insurance for their workers will get a 50 percent tax credit on their contribution. The tax credit reaches up to small businesses with up to 50 employees and average wages of $50,000, though it gets smaller as the business get bigger and richer. The credit lasts for two years, though many think Congress will be pressured to extend it, which would raise the long-term cost of the legislation.

Insurance companies are not allowed to discriminated based on preexisting conditions. They are allowed to discriminate based “on age (limited to 3 to 1 ratio), premium rating area, family composition, and tobacco use (limited to 1.5. to 1 ratio).”

Starting in 2018, the law imposes a 35 percent tax on employer-provided health plans that exceed $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family coverage. The idea is a kind of roundabout second-best to capping the tax code’s (currently unlimited) deduction for employer-provided heath insurance. The policy idea is to give employers that much more reason to avoid expensive insurance policies and thus give insurers that much more reason to hold costs down.

The law requires insurers to spend between 80 and 85 percent of every premium dollar on medical care (as opposed to administration, advertising, etc). If insurers exceed this threshold, they have to rebate the excess to their customers. This policy is already in effect, and insurers are expected to rebate $1.1 billion this year.

The law is expected to spend a bit over $1 trillion in the next 10 years. The law’s spending cuts — many of which fall on Medicare — and tax increases are expected to either save or raise a bit more than that, which is why the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will slightly reduce the deficit. (There’s been some confusion on this point lately, but no, the CBO has not changed its mind about this.) As time goes on, the savings are projected to grow more quickly than the spending, and CBO expects that the law will cut the deficit by around a trillion dollars in its second decade. Here’s its graph, which covers the period between 2012 and 2021:

In recent years, health-care costs have slowed dramatically. Much of this is likely due to the recession. Some of it may just be chance. But there’s also evidence that the law has accelerated changes in the way the medical system delivers care, as providers prepare for the law’s efforts to move from fee-for-service to quality-based payments.

The law’s long-term success at controlling costs will likely hinge on its efforts to change the way health care is delivered, most of which have gotten very little attention. They include everything from encouraging Accountable Care Organizations to spreading medical homes to penalizing hospitals with high rates of preventable infections to creating an independent board able to quickly implement new reforms through the Medicare system. A partial list of these efforts can be found here.

Without a doubt the Affordable Care Act is not perfect, it will need work as it is implemented. When this bill is broken down and explained many Americans like what’s in the bill.

AGAIN LET ME CLEARLY STATE, WHEN THE BILL IS BROKEN DOWN PIECE BY PIECE AMERICANS LIKE WHAT’S IN THE BILL!!!

Instead of Republicans worrying about repealing Obamacare how about Republicans and Democrats work together to make the law better.

As always….

If there is something to be said, “It’s On Broadway” to step up and say it!!

Around 10am Eastern we will know the fate of Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) as the Supreme Court of the United State aka SCOTUS will deliver their decision concerning the constitutionality of the mandate.

Of course everyone has an opinion on what the decision will be but as folks like Ezra Klein and Lawrence O’Donnell will tell you, know whats what the decision of SCOTUS will be. Whatever the decision, this battle of Health Care will be far from being over.

Millions of Americans will still be without health care

Health Care costs continue to rise, albeit at a slower rate

Republicans have no plan to replace the Affordable Care Act

The ability to support Americans with pre-existing conditions along with trying to give health care to low-income families would die with the lost of the mandate. If you don’t believe me you can look to Washington state as an example of how taking away the mandate will lead to failure. Check out Ezra Klein‘s article on the mandate in Washington state.

All in all Thursday June 28th will be a long day for both Republicans and Democrats, and it doesn’t matter which side SCOTUS rules in favor of.

And of course the REAL loser in all of this… THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!!

As always….

If there is something to be said, “It’s On Broadway” to step up and say it!!